Monday, November 28, 2016.
Back To Too Much Work.
The pileup at my desk is enough to make me groan. We have several Eat Club events approaching, and all of them need to have the computer software rebuilt. It all worked perfectly for years, and suddenly it's collapsing.
Also on the checklist are two commercials that start today on the radio. I wrote and recorded them yesterday, but I had two bits of data wrong, and I had to record the whole thing over again. It's impossible to just re-record the bad spot. The same vocal cords sound totally different when two separate recordings are next to one another.
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Red beans and rice with hot sausage and a jonnycake at Abita Roasters.[/caption]Well, at least I had a good lunch. Abita Roaster makes excellent red beans and rice, and have the good Patton's hot sausage to go with it. A neat little extra is a cornmeal pancake served alongside the beans and rice. I've never seen that anywhere else.
NPAS has a dress rehearsal for the concert they will give this weekend, the last of 2016. I say "they" because I've missed two critical rehearsals, and that's enough for a singer to be booted off the performance roster for that show. I fully understand. I don't have the music down, and I would be a drag on the singers who do.
Mary Ann is coming in from Los Angeles tonight at ten-ish. Jude loves his mom, but he's an adult with many responsibilities. When Mary Ann asks when she should head back home, he says, "Mom, you're leaving on Monday. If you want to come back on Tuesday, that's another story. But today you are leaving!" Fair enough, she says. She has been in a nearby hotel for most of a week.
I pick her at about half past ten, after I have dinner at the Flaming Torch. We were to have an Eat Club there tonight, but the autumn lull--football, the need to get kids back to school, and the first wave of holidays--make it tough to stage a big dining event.
I go there myself because I have a feeling some Eat Clubbers did not get the word. In fact, there was only one such. Mike Kettenring is a Catholic priest. He has called me a few times on the air, and and I think he's been to our dinners. Because he had a better table than I did, I moved over to a chair on his. We get to talking, unearthing interesting data about his past. He was a television broadcaster before, when his wife died, he decided to enter the priesthood. Suddenly I knew who he was. I remember him as the news director at Channel Six. We never worked together, but my career crossed his on many of the same paths.
He has much to say about everything from food to religion and elections to the Flaming Torch itself. I was very happy to make his acquaintance.
MA's plane shows up on time. She has no bags to carry, and we head home. I've had a rough day and I am very tired, but somehow I always awaken when MA is around.
Flaming Torch. Uptown: 737 Octavia. 504-895-0900.
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Tuesday, November 29, 2016.
Return To The Studio. To Dinner @ Ruth's Chris In Metairie.
The other Mary--my daughter--had just finished a job interview when I got off the air. I don't remember her telling me about how that turned out, but she came out of it with a gig that involves her graphic artistry.
We go through the usual rigamarole as to where we will have dinner. I mention Ruth's Chris Steak House in Metairie, more to make the point that her dad was willing to take her out for a big dinner than to slake a particular appetite for either of us.
I get some good facts from this dinner. Ruth's Chris has lately been marketing a double-cut, bone-in filet mignon. This is an interesting idea. It's essentially the tenderloin side of a porterhouse, with a remnant of the T-bone. I had one of these about a year ago at the Ruth's downtown. I didn't like it, and for reasons not entirely due to the fact that it was cold and windy that night, and Mary Ann wanted as always to get an outdoor table. So the waiter couldn't keep the thing hot.
This time we had no such problems. This is a better steak to begin with, very tender, nicely seasoned, and holding in a lot of juiciness where the meat met the bone.
I will have to do further research on another matter, but I think I'm onto something. Creamed spinach lately has been terrible just about everywhere except Antoine's and Galatoire's. The spinach at Ruth's has been a staple long enough for it to see changes in the steakhouse world. One of those involves creamed spinach. The spinach is younger than it used to be. The bagged stuff used by most restaurants is baby spinach, with more water held in the leaves. It doesn't have much body or flavor. Result: creamed spinach is coming out a thick soup. Which isn't the way it should be. And the way it was tonight.
Our server is a young woman who is very much on the ball. When she comes by and asks whether there were something else she can get for us, I give my usual answer: "Yes! I'd like a pet bunny!" Waiters respond to this in ways ranging from "huh?" to "we don't have that tonight" or a look that says, "what am I doing here?" But this lady, about a half-hour later, comes back with a photo of a cute bunny printed out from somewhere online. Clever! Ruth Fertel would have approved. She always said that you should give customers whatever they want, even if it's something absurd.
Ruth's Chris Steak House. Metairie: 3633 Veterans Blvd, 504-888-3600.
